Prisoner torture 'included sex assault with broomstick'

Outrage over the torture of Iraqi prisoners by United States troops intensified tonight after claims that the abuse included sexual assault and threats of rape.

The New Yorker magazine said it had obtained a US Army report that Iraqi detainees were subjected to “sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses” at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

Those abuses included threats of rape and the pouring of water and liquid from chemical lights on detainees, said the internal report by Major General Antonio Taguba.

Detainees were beaten with a broom handle and one was sodomized with ”a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick,” the report said, according to the magazine in its May 10 issue.

Colonel Jill Morgenthaler, spokeswoman for the US command in Baghdad, said Taguba had prepared an internal report, but she could not comment on the findings because they were classified.

The new allegations are expected to fuel a growing sense of outrage which swelled in Iraq after release of shocking pictures of prisoners being humiliated by their US captors – who invaded Iraq last year to liberate the country from Saddam’s tyranny.

Although the pictures have not been widely published by Iraqi newspapers, many Iraqis have seen them on Arabic language satellite television stations such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.

Tonight, a member of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council demanded that Iraqi authorities investigate the reports of torture – which happened in the very prison where Saddam Hussein’s regime tortured and murdered its opponents.

“After what we saw, all Iraqis will attack them now,” Abdulilah Mohammed, 55, a Baghdad street vendor, said of the Americans.

Some photos, aired first on CBS’ “60 Minutes II”, showed two US soldiers standing near the prisoners, smiling and clowning for the camera.

Another showed a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his hands. CBS said the prisoner was told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted, although the wires were not connected to a power supply.

“The Governing Council should investigate this because it is the legitimate authority responsible of protecting the Iraqis,” Governing Council member Sondul Chapouk told The Associated Press.

“During Saddam’s time we rejected such acts and after the liberation we still reject them.”

Another council member, Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, said the perpetrators must be punished “as war criminals” because “the dignity of an Iraqi citizen is no less than the dignity of an American”.

US officials both in Baghdad and in Washington have expressed their own outrage over the alleged abuse at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, notorious during Saddam’s era as a major centre of torture, rape and murder.

“Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people,” President George Bush said on Friday. “That’s not the way we do things in America. I didn’t like it one bit.”

The US military had been looking into the alleged abuse of prisoners well before the pictures emerged.

Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US forces in Iraq, ordered a criminal investigation last January into alleged abuse of detainees.

Six US soldiers face courts-martial in the case. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, and at least seven others have been ”suspended” from their duties.

Col Morgenthaler, a military spokeswoman in Baghdad, said in an e-mail that three of the six soldiers facing courts-martial have completed their Article 32 hearings, the military equivalent of a grand jury proceeding. In all cases, the adjudicating officer recommended that all charges go forward to general courts-martial.

The scandal broadened today after the Daily Mirror in Britain published new photographs of a hooded Iraqi prisoner who reportedly was beaten by British troops. The newspaper’s front-page picture showed a soldier apparently urinating on the prisoner, who was sitting on the floor.

The Mirror report quoted unidentified soldiers as saying the unarmed captive shown in its photograph had been threatened with execution during eight hours of abuse, and was left bleeding and vomiting. They said the captive was then driven away and dumped from the back of a moving vehicle, and it was not known whether he survived.

“If it happened, it’s completely unacceptable,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.

Such comments have done little to assuage anger among Iraqis, many of whom are already chafing under foreign rule. Even those most supportive of the US effort fear the Americans have lost the moral high ground.

“It is inhumane torture,” said Majid Karim. “No one could accept that. Those who are torturing our youth, the prisoners, are Israeli intelligence agents.”

Imad Othman, a 29-year-old civil engineer, said that unless the American guards are severely punished, “it will really create a grudge against the Americans and attacks against them will increase”.